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From: jwz@spice.cs.cmu.edu (Jamie Zawinski)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Subject: Re: LISPMs and UNIX
Message-ID: <4922@pt.cs.cmu.edu>
Date: 6 May 89 06:17:30 GMT
Organization: Carnegie-Mellon University, CS/RI
Lines: 25

buff@pravda.gatech.edu (Richard Billington) writes:
> So, please, what does this mean: Lisp machines are not general purpose,
> but unix is?

To far too many people "general purpose" means Unix.  There aren't many
"general purpose" workstations that are not at least Unix-like.  A good
example of this (no flames intended, just an example of this "everything is
Unix" assumption) is Rob Vollum's assertion that NFS is more transparent
than the Lispm way - even though not all systems speak NFS, while a Lispm
can be conveniently configured to speak anything that a foreign system does.

My View of Reality:
  o  Unix is what happens when you build an OS around an FS.
  o  C is what happens when you build a language around an instruction set.
     (Or: C is what happens when you write a parser stoned.)
  o  LISPMs are what happen when you design a language for ease of 
     programming, and design an architecture around that.

> The article that started this off and subsequent comments of "boy I'd miss
> piping, etc" only emphasize to me how broken people's concept of the right 
> way to do things can become.

This is my vote for sentence-of-the-month.

	-- Jamie
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